These are poems, stories, and personal commentaries about whatever I am going through in my life at the time. Please feel free to comment on anything that you read, as I love to hear from my readers. All written by Writer M Ray Holloway Jr.

I got a text from my son at 8:45 this morning; that's 7:45 where he lives, so I was impressed that he thought of me so early in the...

Friday, December 4, 2015

December 4th, 2015: Getting closer to time...

I began the long process of editing my Time Travel novel yesterday, and I can already see that it needs a lot of work. I got it written in an amazingly short time, following some suggestions from pros and just focusing on getting the words down on paper (well, computer screen) and worry about making changes and corrections afterwards. Then, I set it aside for a couple of weeks while I wrote a short story for my nephew Noah and sketched out some ideas for another short story that I will write after the novel is done.
Other than misspelled words and grammatical errors, the thing that I need to concentrate on the most is the flow of the story. It is crammed full of detail and events, but I don't want it to read like a diary. "Today I did this, then I did this, and then I did this other thing..." There are some segments that will likely come out of the story, and I've already thought of some things that will need to go in that I missed in the first draft. "Why is Carol wearing a wig?" Um... maybe because I forgot to say she was at a Halloween party?
Reading through it again and outlining where my edits will take place, I feel very good about the story itself, and think that it will be popular, but I just need to get it into better shape to make it easier for the reader to follow.
I did something new today for my Goodreads author page. I did video readings of a couple of my poems from "Encouragements: A Collection of Poems". They are posted out there for the world to see. It has been decades since I did any interpretive reading, and even though they are my poems, it took a few tries before I got anything usable. I feel like I did better on "The Giant" than "The Peace in Your Presence", but it offered something to my followers that they didn't have before.
I need to go baby-sit this evening, and then there is the church Christmas service, where we sing carols all service. I will be doing a solo there of "How Many Kings" by Downhome. After that, I really have to get down to work and get this editing done.